5 ms·

Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive w

by buro9 8y ago

Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you. If we care about the human race, it means to care about the whole ecosystem and all other life on Earth. But the evidence of behaviour by people and governments is that they only care for themselves as individuals and not the wider human race, and other life on Earth. I no longer see hope for significant change in the behaviour of humans, and I've shifted my view to believing that what is needed to provide massively long-term stability in the ecosystem for life on Earth is another mass extinction that includes humans. Which sounds depressing, but doesn't feel it. I'm positive about life on Earth, just not about humans.

AznHisoka 8y ago
“The planet has been through a lot worse than us. And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!”
jjeaff 8y ago
Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space, the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands. Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long time.
- loriverkutya 8y ago
  Humans cannot survive in the vacuum of space. Check the twin experiment NASA done lately.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Human societies can have individuals doing all that. Stable, large societies. The astronauts can survive in the vacuum of space because of technology, and they can get to space because of technology - technology that is backed by hundreds of thousands of people all across the greater economic machine that built the rocket and the space suits, and supplied and fed everyone involved. As individuals, we're not much more interesting than any other animal. It's our technological civilization that makes us interesting in the grand scheme of things, and that civilization is both hard to bootstrap and extremely fragile.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    Without our technology, we can still run farther and longer than any other species, use our delicate fingers and opposable thumbs, control fire, and make and use tools and solve relatively complex puzzles. As a species, without our tech, we are head and shoulders above most species.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Sort of. But fire and tools are technology, the very lowest tier. Our ability to stack technology, to use tools to build better tools, is what makes us interesting - as long as we actually make use of this ability.
- jaakl 8y ago
  Humans have survived fine these extremes only because there is normal ecosystem outside from it. Now imagine that after climate collapse the vacuum of space, top of the peak or bottom of the ocean is the only environment we have. You don't even have a single remote island with reasonable nature. No, humans will not survive it for long.
- crispinb 8y ago
  > Humans are the ultimate adapters. Well yes, nearly ('extreme' perhaps: 'ultimate' sounds a bit magical), but that's the problem. Darwinian evolution has created a creature than can avoid most sources of population limits that permit ecosystem stability. This same creature has the flexibility to repeat the trick in all regions on the planet, crashing one after another. And then although our species is (for better or worse) remarkably resilient, agricultural civilisation is far too new to be able to make similar claims about it. The 21st century signs aren't good. It's hard to imagine major climate collapse convulsions not resulting in ongoing wars, probably nuclear. So yes, literal extinction of humans doesn't seem likely. Some people may enjoy the idea of a dystopic 'The Road' style rag-tag dog-eat-dog existence (though they're probably mostly pale wormy teens who in real life panic when out of reach of a screen). But the breakdown of a planetary society of 7-12 billion (depending on how far into this process we can jury rig nations to hold together) is going to be nothing but a litany of sorrow & pain.
Carpetsmoker 8y ago
> The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. Humans will be fine, as a species. But the human and economic costs will be large. Compare it to the Hurricane Katrina: most people in New Orleans weathered it fine (i.e. by evacuating the city). The city itself also survived mostly okay (it's still there). But the economic cost of cleanup was huge; and while most people survived without injury, many did not for various reasons. The choice of "spend a bit of money now, save a Katrina later" versus "save money now, have a Katrina later" is pretty clear. Unfortunately in the case of Katrina we didn't have much of a choice, but for climate change we do. If we invest resources now we can save a lot of problems later on. Or we can spend our resources on other things now, and pay a huge price later. Alarming "zomg we might all die" stuff isn't really all that helpful or likely to convince politicians or businesses to actually do something. It also invites the "meh, the earth has been warmer" counter-argument, which is missing the point. I think more level-headed risk analysis which lists potential costs/benefits is more useful.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  If the main argument is economic costs, then this turns the discussion from a global to a localized problem, whether the required actions or sacrifices justify the local risks. For example, is it worth for some country to "invest", say, $100 billion in reducing emissions - which, at least unilaterally, won't be sufficient to prevent the effects of climate change but just mitigate them - or can they achieve better mitigation by a comparable investment in reinforcing their shoreline, updating or relocating buildings, etc? If USA had to vote on whether to spend (or lose by restricting growth) $1 trillion of USA resources to prevent $10 trillion of future losses in SE Asia, then I'd assume that such proposals would be swiftly declined; spending our resources on other things now and having someone else pay a huge price later would be considered a quite good deal by many governments, as the countries that most need to take action are not the same countries that will bear the harshest consequences.
  - Carpetsmoker 8y ago
    > If the main argument is economic costs Economic, human, and ecological costs. I am not hugely in favour of reducing everything to economics (although it's definitely an important part). I also don't think that it's as simple as "$1 trillion of USA resources to prevent $10 trillion of future losses in SE Asia". Globalisation means that "local" economies aren't really all that local; so problems in e.g. SE Asia will also affect other parts of the world.
titzer 8y ago
> Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine... TBH statements like these really grate on me. Yes, Earth will be fine in the same sense that you'd be fine if you surgically removed your arms, legs, eyeballs, ears, and tongue and then were fed intravenously and your waste disposed of for you. You might live a long life and have lots of nice dreams. The reality is that we are in early stages of kicking off a cascade of effects that could wipe out the majority of the food web on Earth--let's say, everything larger than your finger. Yeah sure, insects and microbes will reboot it all--in a hundred millions years, if ever. Wonderful! To make such flippant remarks about so profoundly annihilating the bioversity of this very special planet is not helpful in the dialogue. Let's please work on this problem seriously.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  I’d love to see a credible source suggesting that climate change has any kind of remote chance of wiping out all life on earth larger than a few cm.
  - titzer 8y ago
    It's not just climate change, it's the combined effects of a lot of different things, not the least of which is overfishing, deforestation, loss of habitat, and selective destruction of ecosystems. So far we've really only scratched the surface, but there have been hundreds of local mass die-offs (billions of individual animals each). https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass-die-off-disease-animals-environment-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass... The Great Barrier Reef is about half dead now. In two years. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-2016-half-the-coral-in-the-great-barrier-reef-has-perished/558302/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-20... But look at what happened at the end of the Permian age. 96% of species were lost. It was due to CO2/methane causing climate change. https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinction... (btw we still have no idea what caused the extinction at the end of the Triassic). We're basically on the way to combining all of these causes of mass extinctions in a super-short timeframe that may mushroom into one super-massive extinction. And as far as what-if's go, if climate change sets off a global conflict, and there's a nuclear war, forget it.
Namari 8y ago
Sounds like a job for Thanos (the last avenger movie) ;)
saiya-jin 8y ago
Nice, dark if not nihilist summary. Have to agree with you there. Things will probably get much worse before they get better. Now there are 2 possible attitudes, either depression from obvious lack of adequate action, or acceptance of what's about to come will come, whatever it is. By acceptance I don't mean ignorance, by all means promote moral, 'green' solutions, recycle, vote for sane people who at least pretend to care (I am looking at you, US). Or do gazillion of other things that help, and avoid those which don't. I know I do my part, however insignificant. But change is inevitable. Even though on paper we can still avoid most dark stuff, we won't. Mankind as a whole will react properly only when it really will start to hurt, globally, and rich won't be able to comfortably escape or hide from it. Some will die because of this. Some will profit from it. On enough long-term scale, it won't matter unless mankind will go extinct which I don't believe will happen. Do I like it? Not at all. Can I change it? Same answer. Am I content with it and not waste my time, energy and mood on being depressed about it? Absolutely.

by buro9 8y ago

AznHisoka 8y ago

“The planet has been through a lot worse than us. And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!”

jjeaff 8y ago

Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space, the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands. Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long time.

loriverkutya 8y ago
Humans cannot survive in the vacuum of space. Check the twin experiment NASA done lately.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Human societies can have individuals doing all that. Stable, large societies. The astronauts can survive in the vacuum of space because of technology, and they can get to space because of technology - technology that is backed by hundreds of thousands of people all across the greater economic machine that built the rocket and the space suits, and supplied and fed everyone involved. As individuals, we're not much more interesting than any other animal. It's our technological civilization that makes us interesting in the grand scheme of things, and that civilization is both hard to bootstrap and extremely fragile.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  Without our technology, we can still run farther and longer than any other species, use our delicate fingers and opposable thumbs, control fire, and make and use tools and solve relatively complex puzzles. As a species, without our tech, we are head and shoulders above most species.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Sort of. But fire and tools are technology, the very lowest tier. Our ability to stack technology, to use tools to build better tools, is what makes us interesting - as long as we actually make use of this ability.
jaakl 8y ago
Humans have survived fine these extremes only because there is normal ecosystem outside from it. Now imagine that after climate collapse the vacuum of space, top of the peak or bottom of the ocean is the only environment we have. You don't even have a single remote island with reasonable nature. No, humans will not survive it for long.
crispinb 8y ago
> Humans are the ultimate adapters. Well yes, nearly ('extreme' perhaps: 'ultimate' sounds a bit magical), but that's the problem. Darwinian evolution has created a creature than can avoid most sources of population limits that permit ecosystem stability. This same creature has the flexibility to repeat the trick in all regions on the planet, crashing one after another. And then although our species is (for better or worse) remarkably resilient, agricultural civilisation is far too new to be able to make similar claims about it. The 21st century signs aren't good. It's hard to imagine major climate collapse convulsions not resulting in ongoing wars, probably nuclear. So yes, literal extinction of humans doesn't seem likely. Some people may enjoy the idea of a dystopic 'The Road' style rag-tag dog-eat-dog existence (though they're probably mostly pale wormy teens who in real life panic when out of reach of a screen). But the breakdown of a planetary society of 7-12 billion (depending on how far into this process we can jury rig nations to hold together) is going to be nothing but a litany of sorrow & pain.

Carpetsmoker 8y ago

> The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. Humans will be fine, as a species. But the human and economic costs will be large. Compare it to the Hurricane Katrina: most people in New Orleans weathered it fine (i.e. by evacuating the city). The city itself also survived mostly okay (it's still there). But the economic cost of cleanup was huge; and while most people survived without injury, many did not for various reasons. The choice of "spend a bit of money now, save a Katrina later" versus "save money now, have a Katrina later" is pretty clear. Unfortunately in the case of Katrina we didn't have much of a choice, but for climate change we do. If we invest resources now we can save a lot of problems later on. Or we can spend our resources on other things now, and pay a huge price later. Alarming "zomg we might all die" stuff isn't really all that helpful or likely to convince politicians or businesses to actually do something. It also invites the "meh, the earth has been warmer" counter-argument, which is missing the point. I think more level-headed risk analysis which lists potential costs/benefits is more useful.

PeterisP 8y ago
If the main argument is economic costs, then this turns the discussion from a global to a localized problem, whether the required actions or sacrifices justify the local risks. For example, is it worth for some country to "invest", say, $100 billion in reducing emissions - which, at least unilaterally, won't be sufficient to prevent the effects of climate change but just mitigate them - or can they achieve better mitigation by a comparable investment in reinforcing their shoreline, updating or relocating buildings, etc? If USA had to vote on whether to spend (or lose by restricting growth) $1 trillion of USA resources to prevent $10 trillion of future losses in SE Asia, then I'd assume that such proposals would be swiftly declined; spending our resources on other things now and having someone else pay a huge price later would be considered a quite good deal by many governments, as the countries that most need to take action are not the same countries that will bear the harshest consequences.
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago
  > If the main argument is economic costs Economic, human, and ecological costs. I am not hugely in favour of reducing everything to economics (although it's definitely an important part). I also don't think that it's as simple as "$1 trillion of USA resources to prevent $10 trillion of future losses in SE Asia". Globalisation means that "local" economies aren't really all that local; so problems in e.g. SE Asia will also affect other parts of the world.

titzer 8y ago

> Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine... TBH statements like these really grate on me. Yes, Earth will be fine in the same sense that you'd be fine if you surgically removed your arms, legs, eyeballs, ears, and tongue and then were fed intravenously and your waste disposed of for you. You might live a long life and have lots of nice dreams. The reality is that we are in early stages of kicking off a cascade of effects that could wipe out the majority of the food web on Earth--let's say, everything larger than your finger. Yeah sure, insects and microbes will reboot it all--in a hundred millions years, if ever. Wonderful! To make such flippant remarks about so profoundly annihilating the bioversity of this very special planet is not helpful in the dialogue. Let's please work on this problem seriously.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
I’d love to see a credible source suggesting that climate change has any kind of remote chance of wiping out all life on earth larger than a few cm.
- titzer 8y ago
  It's not just climate change, it's the combined effects of a lot of different things, not the least of which is overfishing, deforestation, loss of habitat, and selective destruction of ecosystems. So far we've really only scratched the surface, but there have been hundreds of local mass die-offs (billions of individual animals each). https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass-die-off-disease-animals-environment-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass... The Great Barrier Reef is about half dead now. In two years. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-2016-half-the-coral-in-the-great-barrier-reef-has-perished/558302/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-20... But look at what happened at the end of the Permian age. 96% of species were lost. It was due to CO2/methane causing climate change. https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinction... (btw we still have no idea what caused the extinction at the end of the Triassic). We're basically on the way to combining all of these causes of mass extinctions in a super-short timeframe that may mushroom into one super-massive extinction. And as far as what-if's go, if climate change sets off a global conflict, and there's a nuclear war, forget it.

Namari 8y ago

Sounds like a job for Thanos (the last avenger movie) ;)

saiya-jin 8y ago

Nice, dark if not nihilist summary. Have to agree with you there. Things will probably get much worse before they get better. Now there are 2 possible attitudes, either depression from obvious lack of adequate action, or acceptance of what's about to come will come, whatever it is. By acceptance I don't mean ignorance, by all means promote moral, 'green' solutions, recycle, vote for sane people who at least pretend to care (I am looking at you, US). Or do gazillion of other things that help, and avoid those which don't. I know I do my part, however insignificant. But change is inevitable. Even though on paper we can still avoid most dark stuff, we won't. Mankind as a whole will react properly only when it really will start to hurt, globally, and rich won't be able to comfortably escape or hide from it. Some will die because of this. Some will profit from it. On enough long-term scale, it won't matter unless mankind will go extinct which I don't believe will happen. Do I like it? Not at all. Can I change it? Same answer. Am I content with it and not waste my time, energy and mood on being depressed about it? Absolutely.